The demand for sophisticated interactive audio designs in interactive media applications today is great, for example, in the area of computer games. However, there is a lack of skilled developers who also have strong sound design skills. To address this deficiency, many development groups use the services of sound designers and other multimedia professionals with expertise in producing and designing audio for applications.
The dichotomy of skills between developer and sound designer naturally creates a dependent relationship. Unfortunately, this relationship can be quite inefficient for a number of reasons. First, existing tools for interactive sound design are more complicated than desired for the average skilled sound designer or other non-programmer. Thus, sound designers are completely dependent on developers for all experimentation, testing, and editing of their soundscapes. Second, the lack of tools for sound designers requires developers to spend time modifying code in order to make changes that are purely aesthetic in nature. Developers generally have many responsibilities in addition to the audio portion of an application, and therefore have little time to iterate with sound designers over aesthetic changes in the audio design. These first two problems create a third problem: audio designs cannot be created and modified simultaneously while code is being written. Therefore, the interactive sound and the non-audio design aspects of the application design are a linear process, rather than a parallel process. This inefficiency often results in higher costs for audio design and/or poorly implemented audio design.
Another significant problem for interactive media developers is the lack of media management tools for either the developer or the sound designer. Therefore, there exists a need for a tool that allows a sound designer to develop and test a soundscape. This tool should enable the sound designer to work independently of the developer of a media application, thereby allowing for the parallel development of the audio and non-audio portions of a media application.